A DORSET Council meeting disappeared from the internet – shortly after questions were asked about a planned savings programme.

Those watching the recording of the Monday evening meeting of the council’s Audit and Governance Committee saw it freeze with a message popping onto the screen to say the video was now private.

In happened immediately after Cllr Jill Haynes (Con, Chalk Valleys) questioned the effectiveness of a £8.6million ‘transformation’ programme which will seek to make savings by streamlining services.

Finance portfolio holder Cllr Simon Clifford (Lib Dem, Chickerell) was about to speak in reply when the screen went blank.

Immediate attempts to find the recording via the council’s own website and the authority’s You Tube channel failed to unearth any trace of the meeting with the link to the recording, send out in the original papers, no longer viewable, although it re-emerged on Wednesday.

Dorset Council has since said that the recording of the meeting was removed from the internet, edited, and put back up again with a section missing after it was realised that confidential matters were discussed which could have led to a security breach.

The situation follows recent problems with the broadcast of other live meetings – with several people saying they had switched off the live or recorded version of the September meeting of the full council, held at the Weymouth Town Council offices, because of poor audio quality. The Local Democracy Reporting Service decided not to report the meeting at all because so many inaudible sections meant it was likely to result in inaccuracies.

Other committee meetings have had problems with complaints about speakers failing to say who they were, or not being introduced by committee chairs; or people not being able to hear everything being said.